There’s a lot happening in India right now. Thousands of people detained, protests shut down before they start, constitutional rights to peaceful assembly being treated as threats to national security. I’m not going to pretend this isn’t about specific people making specific decisions (it absolutely is) but what’s been grinding at me the last few days isn’t about naming names. It’s about the fact that the societal infrastructure that’s supposed to protect their right to ask questions, is actively punishing them for asking.

That’s the part that breaks something in me - not the politics but the silence that gets manufactured around it.

Because I also think most of us have been in rooms, at work, in relationships, in families, where the path of least resistance is to just nod. Say “okay, cool, we’ll get it done”. Move on. Not because you agree, but because disagreeing is exhausting and the room doesn’t feel like it wants your question. That’s a mentality, not a moment. It builds slowly. And the scariest part is that it doesn’t feel like giving up. It just feels like being practical.

Stephen Covey’s circle of influence is real. I own a cap that literally says “it is what it is”. There are things completely outside your control and you have to let them go. But inside that circle? Inside the things that affect your life, your team, your growth? “It is what it is” has no business being there.

Questioning is uncomfortable. You will look like the difficult one. You might not always be liked or you might be wrong. But the alternative is complacency, and complacency is the most dangerous thing you can catch because it doesn’t feel like anything. It just feels like calm, maturity, peace. It feels like picking your battles. And then one day you realise you haven’t picked a single one in months and you’ve quietly become someone who just goes along.

Here’s what’s actually incredibly funny and ironic. We’re building AI tools that can process, “cogitate” and generate faster than any of us ever will. If we also stop being the ones who question, who push back, who say “this doesn’t feel right” when something genuinely doesn’t, then what exactly are we contributing that a well-prompted model can’t? The one thing we have, the actual thing that makes us the most evolved species on this planet, is our ability to be curious, to be uncomfortable, to refuse to accept something just because it’s presented with enough authority.

This isn’t a memo with a five-step guide to being braver. I don’t have a framework for it. I just know that the question is always worth asking, even when the room doesn’t want it - especially when the room doesn’t want it.

M.

Here’s Sid from my team questioning ‘how to become a better designer’ and doing a fine job at it!

xx

Manuja

Not for everyone. Never was.